'So on those happy days of yore

Oft as I dare to dwell once more,

Still must I miss the friends so tried,

Whom Death has severed from my side.

But ever when true friendship binds,

Spirit it is that spirit finds;

In spirit then our bliss we found,

In spirit yet to them I'm bound.'

UHLAND.

Margaret was ready long before the appointed time, and had

leisure enough to cry a little, quietly, when unobserved, and to

smile brightly when any one looked at her. Her last alarm was

lest they should be too late and miss the train; but no! they

were all in time; and she breathed freely and happily at length,

seated in the carriage opposite to Mr. Bell, and whirling away

past the well-known stations; seeing the old south country-towns

and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure sun, which

gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different to

the cold slates of the north.

Broods of pigeons hovered around

these peaked quaint gables, slowly settling here and there, and

ruffling their soft, shiny feathers, as if exposing every fibre

to the delicious warmth. There were few people about at the

stations, it almost seemed as if they were too lazily content to

wish to travel; none of the bustle and stir that Margaret had

noticed in her two journeys on the London and North-Western line.

Later on in the year, this line of railway should be stirring and

alive with rich pleasure-seekers; but as to the constant going to

and fro of busy trades-people it would always be widely different

from the northern lines. Here a spectator or two stood lounging

at nearly every station, with his hands in his pockets, so

absorbed in the simple act of watching, that it made the

travellers wonder what he could find to do when the train whirled

away, and only the blank of a railway, some sheds, and a distant

field or two were left for him to gaze upon. The hot air danced

over the golden stillness of the land, farm after farm was left

behind, each reminding Margaret of German Idyls--of Herman and

Dorothea--of Evangeline. From this waking dream she was roused.

It was the place to leave the train and take the fly to Helstone.

And now sharper feelings came shooting through her heart, whether

pain or pleasure she could hardly tell. Every mile was redolent

of associations, which she would not have missed for the world,

but each of which made her cry upon 'the days that are no more,'

with ineffable longing. The last time she had passed along this

road was when she had left it with her father and mother--the

day, the season, had been gloomy, and she herself hopeless, but

they were there with her. Now she was alone, an orphan, and they,

strangely, had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of

the earth. It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in the

sun-light, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely

the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years.

Nature felt no change, and was ever young.




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